In general, manufacturing operations collect more than enough data to form a basis for the initial stages of transformation. The challenge is that many may not have a clear idea of how to use it or cannot easily access it because it is locked in legacy systems. And simply accessing that data is not enough – organizations must be able to monetize it.

Despite enthusiasm for digital manufacturing, few companies have realized its potential at scale, according to a new survey by McKinsey. While there is significant importance placed on the topic and many pilots have been launched across a range of use cases, less than a third of respondents cite having moved critical use cases—such as digital performance management—into large-scale rollout. At the same time, more than 90 percent of surveyed companies believe that they are either at the forefront of digital manufacturing in their industry or, at least, on par with the competition.

In their new book, Human + Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI, Paul Daugherty and James Wilson make a compelling case for pairing this particular technology with human capital. In their research, they found that companies that focus on human and machine collaboration create outcomes that are two to more than six times better than those that focus on machine or human alone. For instance, BMW has found that robot/human teams were about 85% more productive than the old assembly line process, where you had industrial robots over on one side of the factory and people working on an old automated assembly line.